


To Tutor the Tentacles

by Hyliare



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, OctoJohn, wimpy tentacle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyliare/pseuds/Hyliare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short ficlet I wrote for @bbcatemysoul's last birthday. Originally just posted on Tumblr, I thought I'd put it here to help contribute to the Wimpy Tentacle tag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Tutor the Tentacles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bbcatemysoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcatemysoul/gifts).



Eight weeks. A week for each of his new appendages.

It wasn’t getting any easier—then again, it hadn’t gotten any _harder_. Mrs Hudson would be one to tell him to be thankful for the “little things.”

Sherlock _loathed_ the “little things.”

A crash made him jump (or it didn’t, since there was no one else in the flat to say otherwise) and he glared over his left shoulder. The third Erlenmeyer flask in as many days. He could hardly keep stealing them from Bart’s, at that rate. He needed new experiments; he needed _flaskless_ experiments. Experiments that would allow him to train, to improve his dexterity.

Two of the eight weeks hardly counted. They’d been spent in a sickeningly-quaint private hospital out in the country, where he’d been treated for chemical burns and minor lung damage, and had been continuously poked and prodded and _annoyed_ by women and men in stark white coats.

The third week had been spent back at Baker Street, but in what Mrs Hudson had politely called “quite a fit.”

One month in, Sherlock had sent his favorite coat out for a very unique sort of tailoring. No questions asked, of course. The tailor thought the modifications were for drug-smuggling, and Sherlock was content to let that remain the idea. On the thirty-fourth day, he’d melted back into familiar wool and taken his first _real_ walk around London…and after having no fewer than twenty-three photos snapped, all of which were remotely deleted via phone infiltrations or, in five film cases, physically destroyed, Sherlock had returned to the tailor and gotten additional modifications in the lower left quadrant. For a firearm, obviously (or at least, obvious to the tailor).

He’d also had the coat dry-cleaned, which had been…necessary.

The fifth and sixth weeks had fared a bit better, but he’d kept his coat on for a large portion of every day. He wore it out, consulted on a few _tiring_ cases, and simply neglected to take it off when he returned to the flat. It simply slipped his mind.

It wasn’t until the seventh week, when he’d been wrapped tightly in his sheets and walking back to the main floor from his lab supply upstairs, that his opinion had begun to change.

Sherlock had designed a rather novice experiment to get back into the swing of things, so to speak. Things with relatively un-volatile chemical salts, mostly. Repeats of experiments he’d already conducted—reinforcement of their results. With his arms full of glassware, burners, and platinum wire, he’d taken about three steps and then tripped spectacularly on his bed sheet.

Although Sherlock knew, logically, that a lax muscular position was better for surviving impacts, he found every subsystem petrified as his materials flew toward the landing, which was approaching at a dizzying speed.

He’d tensed in preparation for a fall that never came. His ears relaxed first, when he heard no shattering, his neck and shoulders second. Finally, his legs had turned to jelly in a most-cliché manner, and he…didn’t drop to his knees.

Seven of the smooth appendages, handless arms, _tentacles_ , that he had gained several weeks prior were wrapped around the railings of the stair case and around the fragile flasks. The eighth was…Well, the eighth was still under the bed sheet. But the other seven had saved, if not Sherlock’s life, then at least his injury and an afternoon’s worth of chemistry.

His feelings had changed, at that point, to the idea that perhaps he’d been too hasty in dismissing them.

Sherlock had dedicated the rest of the seventh week, and the following eighth, to experimenting on the tentacles. Not on himself. He hadn’t been quite keen enough to accept them to _that_ extent.

But on the tentacles.

Which found him in his current state, rolling his eyes as the eighth tentacle, the one he’d begun referring to as the “little one,” continued its somewhat wimpy fit. The other seven had moved the other pieces of glassware away soon after the first crash, leaving the three and a half foot (over a foot shorter than the others—due to scar tissue in the growth area, Sherlock had hypothesized) appendage to fail uselessly around its full range of motion, devoid of further projectiles.

It was odd.

He couldn’t precisely feel them, or what they touched, and he hadn’t yet mastered the control of the seven “typical” tentacles, but he could tell there was a connection. Sherlock put down his oyster-shucking knife and lifted the goggles from his eyes. “If you’re going to act that way, I’ll tie you up.”

That seemed to cow it. The little one snuck back toward his side, inching toward the nearest oyster.

“ _No_.”

Sherlock snatched it up and the tentacle retreated again.

After more or less exhausting the experiments that could be conducted on one’s…appendages, Sherlock had moved back toward basic exploration. Currently, he was absorbed in the testing of oyster shell— _nacre_ —more commonly known as mother of pearl. It might one day come in handy. Possibly. If tacky jewelry was ever collected as evidence.

He was testing its hardness and the strengths of the material in both natural states and chemically-altered ones. It was proving… _somewhat_ interesting.

No, it wasn’t.

It was horrible. Horrible and _dull_.

With a scowl, Sherlock dropped his goggles, picked back up his knife, and jammed it into the latest victim. He’d gotten rather good after three dozen—it popped open with a wet grind.

The little one popped up again, with interest. Sherlock cocked his head.

Nestled in the meat of the oyster, half-wrapped around the tiny, misshapen beginnings of a pearl, was a…What?

It wasn’t a crab. It wasn’t a starfish. It wasn’t an octopus…Or was it?

Sherlock dropped the knife as a second, _typical_ tentacle helpfully removed his goggles. He brought the oyster up for a closer look.

Whatever it was seemed to stir, stretching two limbs up while eight stretched down below.

Sherlock reached out with his free hand for the microscope that two tentacles had lifted and placed nearer to him. He got a fresh slide so he could carefully coax the creature onto it, then placed it under the lens—he left the light off, for the time being.

And there, on the tiny slide, was a tiny merman. There was no other word to describe it. Mer _person_ , maybe. Sherlock supposed he had no way of knowing what gender the thing was. But the bottom half consisted of eight burnished orange octopus-like tentacles and the top was a flat-chested, golden-skinned “human” with what seemed to be short greyish-blonde hair. It stretched again. It yawned. What business did a _merperson_ have _yawning?_

The image went suddenly blurry, and Sherlock had to pull the glass slide away before his shortest tentacle managed to ruin it by knocking around the side of the microscope. The little one turned all the knobs it could manage to find traction on, and flicked the light on and off a few times.

Sherlock pursed his lips, then went back to staring at the slide with bare eyes.

“So…Who are you?”


End file.
